WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Department of Justice initiated proceedings
today to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Mays Landing, New Jersey, man based
on his service during World War II as an armed guard at three Nazi slave labor
camps.

The complaint, filed today by the Criminal Division's Office of Special
Investigations (OSI) and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New
Jersey, alleges that Andrew Kuras trained as an SS auxiliary at the
Nazi-operated Trawniki Training Camp in German-occupied Poland and served as
an armed guard at three different Nazi slave labor camps. In one of the
largest single massacres of the Holocaust, some 20,000 Jewish prisoners from
two of those camps were shot to death within a single 36-hour period, on
November 3-4, 1943.

The lawsuit filed by the Government today seeks a ruling that Kuras, 80,
obtained his U.S. citizenship illegally and a judgment revoking that
citizenship.

"It would be anathema to the values our country cherishes to count among our
citizens individuals who aided the Nazis in their infamous quest to rid the
world of millions of men, women and children," said United States Attorney
Christopher Christie of New Jersey.

The complaint alleges that after entering German service in December 1942,
Kuras trained at the Trawniki camp, run jointly by the SS and the German
police, which trained Eastern European recruits to assist the Nazis in
implementing their plan to murder Jews in Poland, code-named "Operation
Reinhard." Kuras served as an armed guard at the SS Labor Camp Trawniki, a
slave labor camp for Jews that was adjacent to the Trawniki camp. The
complaint states that from late February 1943 until at least April 1943, Kuras
served as an armed guard at another slave labor camp for Jewish prisoners in
German-occupied Poland, the SS Labor Camp Poniatowa. Kuras also guarded Jewish
prisoners forced to dig peat at Dorohucza, a slave labor camp located near the
SS Labor Camp Trawniki.

On November 3-4, 1943, most of the Jewish prisoners in Lublin District were
murdered by German SS and police forces as part of Nazi Germany's so-called
"final solution to the Jewish question." At the Poniatowa camp, some 14,000
Jewish men, women and children were shot. Approximately 6,000 were shot at the
SS Labor Camp Trawniki.

OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum said, "Kuras and other Trawniki-trained guards
successfully prevented those interned at the Nazi slave labor camps from
escaping the tragically inhumane conditions at those camps, thereby helping to
ensure that thousands of Jews died unimaginably horrible deaths."

Kuras immigrated to the United States in 1951 and became a naturalized U.S.
citizen in 1962. The complaint alleges that he concealed his service as an
armed guard at the three Nazi slave labor camps when he applied for his visa
by telling U.S. officials that he had spent the war years as a farmer in his
hometown in Poland and then in a town in Germany.

Michael Chertoff, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal
Division, said, "The Nazis and their accomplices extinguished the lives of
millions of innocent people. It is never too late to deny these individuals
the benefits of U.S. citizenship, which they obtained illegally."

Since 1979, 70 Nazi persecutors have been stripped of their U.S. citizenship
and 57 have been removed from the country, as a result of OSI operations.
Also, 165 suspected Nazi persecutors have been stopped at U.S. ports of entry
and barred from entering the country.